More stairs

All but three steps are done! I've never appreciated how smooth and quiet nice stairs are!

Metaphor

I have one beautiful, lovely, gorgeous step:

 metaphors and aphorisms abound

Bob was trying out the durability of the construction adhesive on one stair tread/riser combination before he did the whole flight of stairs.  But it's the most pertyist step you ever did see!

Pretty soon I'll be walking up and down just to experience the pure staircase perfection.  Who needs exercise equipment?!   Okay, me, but that's not the point.

Stairs.  Well, stair.  But soon: stairs.

The End.

Beauty!

It's a beautiful day here in the North Country!  Blue sky, colorful leaves, warm breezes...   it's our last hurrah before the cold blows in and settles down for 5 months. But today... we are in heaven.

But the real thing of beauty around here?   

The arctic entry floor!   

SQUEEEEEEE!!!!!    

We have a few pieces in the corner that still need to be laid down, but it's so so SO beautiful!  

Come on over and gaze upon our Arctic Entry in all its glorious beauty.  You know you want to.   

Back steps

So last winter, after we moved into The Log House in December, the Hubs had to use the rickety temporary construction steps out the back door to feed the boiler.   In advance of the heating season this year, the menfolk decided to build a nice new sturdy set of steps.  I was expecting just simple little stairs, but I returned from work to this:

A wee little deck!   I *may* have squealed a little with joy.  

Over the following week, Bob - and an assortment of friends and family - completed the decking and the steps.  

No, the cat didn't help much.

Now I can grill on the deck like a real 'Merican and not in the woodshed.   And the Hubs won't fall to his death in a snowbank this winter.

Which would put a real damper in my plans for a new back door.  Heh.

Hang your hat

That arctic entry is almost ready for prime time!   And even this manual labor-phobic blogger has been pitching in.  I helped shellac the vertical wall boards and sanded and shellacked and polyurethaned the horizontal cherry boards that the coat hooks will be mounted on!  Yes, I did!  I can prove it:

Me, shellacking the wall boards.  

Me, sanding the cherry coat rack boards

Okay, this one is The Husband, removing the loose bark from the edges of the coat rack boards.

Well, that doesn't really prove I helped.  But it's hard to take a selfie AND actually do some real work.  I tried.  No can do.  So, you get my weird-looking hands and the opportunity to trust me on this.  You're welcome.   

This is the before picture of the cherry coat rack boards:  

  

This is the after:

Yes, it looks like bacon to me, too.  I ain't got noooo problem with that!

I imagine we'll discover at some point that we'll need more than one hook.

Summer 2015

It's a hot, hazy mid-summer day in Northern New York!  We don't get too many, comparatively speaking, and so we love to hate these days.  The Hubs has been picking away at this and that on The Log House, completing little tasks, but his father is intent on finishing that arctic entry! 

He has started to put the hand-milled boards up on the walls:

 

It's hard to get a good angle for a picture

 

The FIL is itching to get the flooring down in there and for me to decide what I want to do with that end wall and whether to continue the boards all the way around.   Advice?  You know I'm not going to take it, what with being so contrary and all, but I do like to *hear* others' opinions.  Heh.

Since it's summer, and that means hosting many friends and family, not much work on The House gets done, but it's an embarrassment of riches of a kind, so we aren't upset!  We do, however, get the largess of my father's garden.  Which is getting largess-ter each year. 

The Girl wandering the garden looking for something to munch on in early July

Our little spinach thief

With the great blessing of living in the woods all hermit-style comes the trial of limited internet access.   *sigh*   SUCH a first-world problem, eh?   So, that has made my blogging even more haphazard.  And we all know it was straight-up iffy at the best of times.  

So, see you in...  what?  November?    

Heh.   You know I'm only half joking.